Keir Starmer’s plans for NHS reform are easier said than done

For the past few months, Keir Starmer has looked a little like Russel Crowe’s John Nash in the film A Beautiful Mind, wandering around looking everywhere for an original idea. He has baffled the public with promises to make the next Labour government ‘clause IV on steroids’ (there are people who’ve had the vote for a decade who had only just been born when Tony Blair changed the original clause IV, which called for public ownership of industry, and many voters who are still older than that who are a bit hazy on the details too). Today, the Labour leader is offering his best approximation of an original idea that people might find relevant to their own lives: big NHS reform. 

‘Big NHS reform’ is one of those phrases that strikes fear into the hearts of anyone working in the health service, given the number of hours that have been lost to reorganisations over the past few decades.